Sunday, August 31, 2008

Congrats to Finland Kettlebell Lifters

Last weekend, some of our Finnish friends took part in the Ventspils Latvia IUKL Competition.

We've had the pleasure of meeting a couple of folks from the Finland team on separate occasions.

We first met Marko Suomi in November 2006 at the IGSF World Championships in Ogre, Latvia. Marko hadn't been lifting long. But, turned in a gutsy set with the 32s. I believe Marko was hooked and inspired after this competition. He is the "Lorraine Patten" of Finland. On his own, he has done a very good job of trying to promote the sport in his country and learn all he can about the lifting. This is hard when you don't have regular access to coaching, but Marko and the other lifters from Finland have stayed after it. In fact, Marko spearheaded a Virtual KB Lifting meet this weekend with participants from Finland, Australia and of course the USA.

Earlier this summer, we met Kukka Lasko in Hamburg. Kukka and I had corresponded online, and I gave her some training tips. Kukka is strong and when she gets her technique down, she will be putting up some bigger numbers. In Ventspils, she turned in a PR performance of 89 reps in the Snatch with a 16kg bell. She went 7.5 minutes. She did this in spite of being sick 3-4 weeks before the competition and being unable to train. Healthy, I have no doubts she would easily broken 100.

5 comments:

Thanks for the kind words Cate! It's certainly been an adventure, and I pretty much owe it all to you guys, that trip to Latvia when we first met was a turning point for me. Who knows what the future will bring, but we need to get together again do to some lifting and maybe some partying :)